Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/630

 520 NOTES AND QUERIES. 1 12 a vm. ^25,1021. nature insoluble. An immature but most graceful and musical drama, it has suffered cuts, adaptations and interpolations, which have not only distorted but also actually truncated it. Mr. Dover Wilson's note on the copy used for the printed text of 1623 is an excellent discussion 1 of the probabilities of the adapter's work, which, we think, may be taken as a sufficient last word on the subject. Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch's pleasant Intro- duction takes this same question of the adapting of the play from the points of view of character, story, style and propriety. The most important theory advanced is that Shakespeare finished the play with a solution which was found un- | acceptable, and that the hopeless concluding scene is the result of botching and some rewriting by an unknown inferior hand, the reasons in support of it being drawn both from the inferiority of the verse in certain places and from gaps and blunders in sense. " The crude and conventional coup de theatre" produced by the "faker" will, on this supposition, have formed the end of the play on the play-copy ; and, this being the source of the Folio text, have come to be printed. We must acknowledge that the more we consider the question the more likely appears this solution. The critical study of this play resolves itself largely into noting discrepancies and contra- dictions, and observing sundry stage effects which Shakespeare tries here for the first time, and uses to more famous purpose in his later work. These entertaining pursuits do in them- selves rather tend to the depreciation of ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' so that Shakespeare's dawning greatness after all gets to itself some- thing of a triumph when it compels the reader, as it so often does, in spite of the above distrac- tions, to linger over and enjoy the still tentative, yet easy and melodious verse, the faintly-coloured but delicately graceful figures of Silvia and Valentine, the drollery, already quite charac- teristic, of Lance, and the generously outlined Julia. The undistinguished stage-history of the play goes to reinforce our opinion that this excellent little volume gives us all that is or will be wanted on its subject. A Manual of Seismology. By Charles Davison. (Cambridge University Press, 1 Is. net.) ALTHOUGH books on scientific subjects are not strictly within our scope we cannot pais over this excellent manual. It does not deal with the history of earthquakes, nor with the history of seismology, but summarizes our present knowledge of the causes and the character of seismic disturbances. While most of it is purely technical, the lucidity both of the style and the arrangement makes it a not impossible work even for the general reader. For the student it will undoubtedly be, for some time, the received textbook on seismology. The work done in this science within the last century is of impressive bulk. De Montessus de Ballore's catalogue of earthquakes contains nearly 160,000 entries, all known earthquakes being included, however slight. Based on this catalogue his seismic map shows that the earth's crust is unstable along two narrow zones, a Mediterranean and a " Circum-Pacific " circle, of which the former counts 52-57 and the latter 38-51 of all known earthquakes. The explanation of this has been taken byDe Montessus de Ballore to go back to the formation of the principal mountain chains in Tertiary times, when, in these regions, sediments of great thickness were flung up, folded upon themselves and dislocated. Conclusions as to the nature of the earth's interior based on seismologies! observations principally on the results obtained by Knott seem to show that the outer crust, known to mankind, has a thickness of about -^nth of the earth's radius ; that a thick, practically homo- geneous layer extends within the outer crust to about half the earth's radius ; and that at a depth between one-half and six-tenths of the earth's radius the elastic solid shell gives place to a non-rigid nucleus. Dr. Davison makes use of the expressions " growth of the earth's crust," " portions of the earth's crust which are now growing," and so on. The use of the word " growth " in this connexion seems to want explaining : and, since it has so definite a bio- logical significance, should perhaps be depre- cated. The so-called " growth " of the earth's crust would seem to be simply a piling up of it, in certain regions, through displacements caused by internal activity. This is as essentially mechanical as the addition of layers of brick to a wall ; and if mountains may, at a stretch, be thereby said " to grow," the expression can hardly be applied, accurately to the crust itself. The book concludes with a suggestive sentence as to the possible influence of other bodies of the solar system not only on the movements but also on the formation of the surface-features of our globe. to Corregponbente. ALL communications intended for insertion in our columns should bear the name and address of the sender not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lishers" at the Office, Printing House Square, London, E.G. 4; corrected proofs to The Editor, ' N. & Q.,' Printing House Square, London, B.C. 4. WHEN answering a query, or referring to an article which has already appeared, correspondents are requested to give within parentheses immediately after the exact heading the numbers of the series, volume, and page at which the con- tribution in question is to be found. W. W. GLENNY (" Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness). This has been discussed in ' N. & Q.' at 2 S. ix. 446 ; 3 S. iv. 419 ; vi. 259, 337 ; vii. 367 ; 4S. ii. 37, 68, 213 ; 5 S. ix. 7; 6 S. xi. 400. Sentences of similar significance to this, which, as our correspondent says, comes from Wesley, are to be found in Aristotle, the Talmud, and St. Augustine.